Tag: Max Drummey

Chester French – The Harvard alum retro-pop duo of D.A. Wallach (Right) and Max Drummey (Left), are taking the music world by storm by way of Pharrell’s Star Trak. Now, doing an interview with yours truely was the best thing they could have done. The music business is muddled with uptight beta-male artists and protective publicists, whom do a great job at clouding any attempt to get to know the artist. Call me in. Whether or not Boston University realizes it, their alum Howard Stern teaches his own course at the HStern School of Interviewing. When you ask softball questions: “What is the meaning of ‘so and so song, you get softball answers, “the song’s about Cats and Dogs” replied Max – to the interviewer previous to myself. I have a polarizing effect – you either love me or hate me – but I’ll be damned if you don’t love Chester French along with me. You know sure, they don’t wear animal masks like Animal Collective and sure one of them was married to a chick named Peaches (that wasn’t in the Mushroom Kingdom), but I am going to put it to you this way: DA+MAX=CF, are some real dudes. Get familiar.

Have you heard the latest buzz word: “Beta Male” (used to describe the newest crop of artists)? What do you think of that classification?
Bullshit ’cause we’re alpha males. We just put out a free album called Jacques Jams, Vol. 1: Endurance, all about pumping iron… if that didn’t tell peeps all about us, I dunno what could.

Does being from the “Ivy League” hurt your street credibility?
We met freshman year [at Harvard] in the dining hall. No – the only thing that hurts credibility is bad music in our opinion. We don’t focus on image and all that too much. Our primary goal is to make good songs, do good live shows, and work hard. We hope that’s the basis at which people judge us. You can come from an Ivy League school still can make stupid songs – we make smarter songs that are interesting… it’s all connected to where we come from and what we’re into.

Are you friends with hip-hop rapper/producer El-P? How did his Jimmy Choos Remix come about?
We don’t know him very well. We emailed with him & he destroyed this [Jimmy Choos] remix he did, which we love. We like all kinds of music. There are a lot of people that listen to us, that don’t think we’d be fans of… like [El-P’s] Company Flow. It was fun to pull that out of the arsenal.